Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor is a monitoring solution in the Azure portal that delivers a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from cloud and on-premises environments. It can be used to monitor various aspects of your environments (for instance, the performance of applications) and identify issues affecting those applications and other resources that depend on them.
The data that is collected by Azure Monitor fits into two fundamental types – metrics and logs. Metrics describe an aspect of a system at a particular point in time and are displayed in numerical values. They are capable of supporting near real-time scenarios. Logs are different from metrics. They contain data that is organized into records, with different sets of properties for each type. Data such as events, traces, and performance data are stored as logs. They can then be combined for analytical purposes.
Azure Monitor supports data collection from a variety of Azure resources. Some of the metrics and logs that Azure Monitor provides are as follows:
- Application monitoring data: Thiswill consist of data about the functionality and performance of the application and the written code, regardless of its platform.
- Guest OS monitoring data: This will consist of data about the OS on which your application is running. This can be running in any cloud or on-premises environment.
- Azure resource monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operation of an Azure resource.
- Azure subscription monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operation and management of an Azure subscription, as well as data about the health and operation of Azure itself.
- Azure tenant monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operation of tenant-level Azure services, such as Azure Active Directory.
Azure Monitor can collect data from several sources, as you can see from the following diagram:
Figure 20.1 – Azure Monitor
As you can see from the diagram, its function is not limited to data collection and also becomes the central platform for the following:
- Gaining insights into your applications and resources
- Being able to visualize your environment and how it’s performing
- Being able to analyze your data and environments
- Creating a mechanism to respond and take action against identified issues and triggers
- Allowing automation of your environment and creating an integration point between other tools and services that are not limited to Azure
We will now discuss the various functions contained within Azure Monitor.